Episodes

June 26, 2026

Patient involvement and the future of clinical research

Most clinical research treats patients like data points. What gets lost when researchers stop listening to the people they study, and what does it cost the science itself? Niharika Singh is a biomedical engineer and pre-medical student with research experience at Genentech, Abbott, AstraZeneca, and the Keck School of Medicine, and a global ambassador with the United Nations SURGhub. She discusses the KevinMD article " Patient involvement transforms modern clinical research ." You will hear the d...
June 25, 2026

How Medicare's new cut is closing private doctor practices

A 30 to 40 percent Medicare cut just hit the doctors who keep your local hospital running, and the policy meant to stop hospital monopolies is accelerating them instead. John Birkmeyer, president of the medical group at Sound Physicians and a former Dartmouth health services researcher, discusses the KevinMD article " Medicare practice expense cuts will hurt patients ." You'll hear how CMS quietly slashed the practice expense portion of Medicare payments for the first time in 20 years, hitting i...
June 24, 2026

How true crime is radicalizing your kids online

Your child is messaging neo-Nazis on Discord, role-playing the Columbine shooting on Roblox, or making fan art of mass killers, and you have no idea. That is the pattern Matthew Turner, an emergency medicine physician at Hershey Medical Center, is now seeing in his pediatric ER, where parents bring in children after spotting a chat-message leak that exposes months of online radicalization. He discusses the KevinMD article " The true crime community is radicalizing kids online ." You'll hear how ...
June 23, 2026

How Medicare is breaking nursing home care

Imagine being penalized for delivering good care to your frailest patients. Medicare's quality scoring program was built for healthy outpatients, not the elderly residents of nursing homes, but it is the system doctors who round in skilled nursing facilities are forced to play. Steve Buslovich, a physician executive and geriatrician, discusses the KevinMD article " How Medicare's MIPS impacts skilled nursing facilities and clinicians ." You'll hear how MIPS metrics conflict with the five-star qu...
June 22, 2026

Why "failed cycle" and "poor responder" wound infertility patients

The words doctors use during fertility care can wound the patient sitting across the desk. "Failed cycle." "Poor responder." "Ovarian failure." For a woman already carrying the grief of a child she has never had, those words can feel like nails in a coffin. Oluyemisi Famuyiwa, a fertility specialist, argues that infertility grief is compounded by cultural stigma and by clinical language medicine rarely audits. This episode is based on her article " The emotional impact of infertility is grief un...
June 20, 2026

Dark money is writing your health care laws

Patients are being cut off from medications they need, doctors are afraid to prescribe, and the reason traces back to political donations most Americans never see. Richard A. Lawhern, health care educator and patient advocate, joins us to explain how lobbying money shapes health care legislation and what patients can do about it. This episode is based on his article " Health care lobbying is destroying the U.S. system ," published on KevinMD. You will hear why $4.5 billion was spent influencing ...
June 18, 2026

Why the people funding health care startups have never treated a patient

Most of the people deciding where billions of health care dollars get invested have never treated a patient. Harsha Moole, a physician scientist and health care venture capital founder, joins Kevin to discuss his KevinMD article " The crash cart that taught me physician-led investing ." You'll hear how a single overlooked workflow problem on a hospital crash cart became a multi-hospital company, why physician-led groups screen every deal through three gates of clinical, regulatory, and reimburse...
June 18, 2026

Why doctors burn out connecting with patients, and how to fix it

Most doctors were never taught how to sit with a patient's grief, anger, or fear without absorbing it. Eva Minkoff, a health care executive coach, and Kim Downey, a physical therapist and physician advocate, join Kevin to discuss their KevinMD article " How regulating clinical empathy prevents physician burnout ." You'll hear why physicians who lean too far into patient emotion burnout, why those who shut down lose trust and treatment adherence, and why both paths end in the same exhaustion. Eva...
June 17, 2026

What's actually behind medical students using AI

Medical students who skip writing their own reflections are not lazy, they are surviving an irrational system. Kathleen Muldoon, a coach and professor, returns to discuss what student AI use in medical education actually reveals about the curriculum, the hidden incentives behind it, and why she calls students in instead of catching them. This episode is based on her article " Driving medical education reform through intellectual honesty ," published on KevinMD. You will hear why pass-fail course...
June 16, 2026

Why most methylene blue cases came from anesthesia, not pills

Most patients on antidepressants are told they can't take methylene blue, even for brain fog. Steven E. Warren, a physician and longevity medicine clinician, joins Kevin to discuss his KevinMD article " 51 cases that reframe methylene blue serotonin syndrome ." You'll hear why 50 of the 51 published serotonin-syndrome cases involved high-dose IV methylene blue given under anesthesia, mostly during parathyroid surgery, rather than the low oral doses used in outpatient longevity practice. Steven w...
June 15, 2026

Low T treatment is silently destroying sperm counts

Up to 40 percent of infertility cases involve combined male and female factors, but the male partner is often skipped. Erica Bove, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist, returns to discuss why that gap exists and what can be done about it. This episode is based on her article " What is often overlooked about male factor infertility ," published on KevinMD. You will hear how prescribed testosterone for low energy and low sex drive can wipe out sperm production, sometimes irrever...
June 14, 2026

Why your ER doctor doesn't know your medical history

Your ER doctor has about 25 minutes to figure out your medical history and decide what to do next. Hamed Husaini, an emergency physician and physician executive, explains why so much of that data never reaches the bedside and what AI can do about it. This episode is based on his article " AI in health care data management: Curing the EHR overload ," published on KevinMD. You will hear why records from skilled nursing facilities, primary care, and home health rarely get read in time, why duplicat...
June 12, 2026

Why the risk aversion that makes you a good doctor wrecks your finances

The same instinct that makes you a careful clinician may be the one sabotaging your financial future. Cardiologist and fiduciary financial planner Stanley Liu joins this episode to explain why physicians' deeply trained aversion to risk becomes maladaptive once it leaves the hospital. This episode is based on his article " Physician financial risk: Balancing capacity and tolerance ," published on KevinMD. You will learn why risk capacity and risk tolerance are two different variables, and why mi...
June 11, 2026

Physician burnout is not your fault, and here's why blaming yourself keeps you stuck

What if the cure for physician burnout has been making it worse the whole time? Lisa Rubiano, an internal medicine physician and physician coach, spent over a decade as a hospitalist before burning out in 2021 and stepping back to figure out what really went wrong. This episode is based on her article " Why resilience is not the cure for physician burnout ," published on KevinMD. You will hear why the resilience narrative quietly shifts blame onto individual physicians while letting toxic system...
June 10, 2026

How to lead a team through uncertainty without breaking trust

Patients know when you are not really present with them, and trust is built or broken in the first few minutes. Jess Bunin, an intensivist, and George Mount, a rheumatologist, co-founders of All Levels Leadership, argue that trust in clinical teams is a practiced skill built from three concrete components: empathy, logic, and authenticity. This episode is based on their article " The secret sauce of leadership trust in health care teams ," published on KevinMD. You will hear why a critical care ...
June 9, 2026

Why AI cybersecurity is now a patient safety issue

Most physicians using AI on patient data have no idea what the real security risks are. Francisco M. Torres, an interventional physiatrist, and Purab Patel, a medical student with a programming background, argue that cybersecurity has become a patient safety issue in medicine, and that the AI pipelines physicians now rely on are more complex than most clinicians realize. This episode is based on their article " Navigating the cybersecurity challenges of artificial intelligence in medicine ," pub...
June 8, 2026

20 years inside a Medicare Advantage insurer, and who actually pays

Medicare Advantage covers more than half of seniors, and the debate over what it really costs is stuck in two camps. Timothy Bulat, a senior consulting actuary who spent nearly two decades leading Medicare Advantage analytics inside a major insurer, raises a question the loudest voices keep avoiding: who actually pays for the program, and is the value being shared fairly? This episode is based on his article " The truth about Medicare Advantage funding and costs ," published on KevinMD. You will...
June 5, 2026

You don't have to feel called to medicine to be a good doctor

Is medicine a calling or just a job? Christie Mulholland thinks that question is the wrong one, and answering it keeps physicians stuck in burnout. Christie, a palliative care physician and certified physician development coach, returns to the show to introduce a four-quadrant matrix that maps how called you feel to medicine against how satisfied you actually are practicing it. This episode is based on her article " Moving beyond the false binary of medicine as a calling ," published on KevinMD....
June 4, 2026

Why AI has outpaced medical malpractice law, and what to do about it

Medical AI is evolving faster than the legal system can regulate it. Richard E. Anderson, CEO of The Doctors Company, the nation's largest physician-owned medical malpractice insurer, argues that the gap between what AI can do clinically and what courts are ready to judge has created a difficult position for physicians, and that it will take a long time for the system to catch up. This episode is based on his article " The future of U.S. medicine: 10 health care trends in 2026 ," published on Ke...
June 3, 2026

What happens when physicians cede AI to direct-to-consumer startups

Rural doctors hit a ceiling around 35 patients a day, and hiring more clinicians will not move it. Tod Stillson, a family physician, medical device inventor, and health care entrepreneur, argues that the physician shortage is not a headcount problem but a knowledge-scaling problem, and that AI with a doctor in the loop is the only realistic way to extend a physician's judgment to more patients without replacing the human relationship. This episode is based on his article " How artificial intelli...
June 2, 2026

Why every new health care tool keeps making the job harder

Most physicians spend more time fighting their software than seeing patients, and piling on new tools has not fixed it. Grace E. Terrell, a physician executive, argues that decades of layering electronic health records, population health tools, remote patient monitoring, and now AI onto sixty-year-old billing infrastructure has produced a Frankenstein stack that burns out clinicians and harms patients. This episode is based on her article " Connected health care workflows: From chore to core pat...
June 1, 2026

MAHA has the right diagnosis and the wrong treatment plan

The same Robert Kennedy Jr. who sued Monsanto over glyphosate in 2017 is now defending an order to expand its production. What does a functional medicine physician do with that? Shiv K. Goel, an internal medicine and functional medicine physician, argues that the Make America Healthy Again movement correctly names the chronic disease crisis, ultra-processed food, and a broken food system, then prescribes the wrong treatment. This episode is based on his article " Make America Healthy Again fails...
May 29, 2026

One hallucinated citation can end your expert witness career

One AI-hallucinated citation on cross-examination, and the expert witness career you built is over. It is already happening. Tracy Liberatore, a former physician assistant turned attorney and founder of the National Expert Academy, walks through the real court cases where clinical experts leaned on generative AI and watched their reports, and their reputations, get thrown out. This episode is based on her article " Expert witness credibility is destroyed by AI opinions ," published on KevinMD. Y...
May 28, 2026

Metrics got you into medicine and are making you unhappy in it

You hit every number: top grades, top test scores, top patients-per-hour. So why does practicing medicine feel hollow? Ben Reinking, a board-certified pediatric cardiologist, medical educator, and certified physician development coach, argues that the same metric-driven mindset that carries pre-meds into medical school is the one leaving attendings disconnected from why they practice. This episode is based on his article " How competency-based education is driving medical education reform ," pub...